Tarek Atoui

Tarek Atoui

At-Tāriq, 2025

Majli 1, 3, and 4

Listening spaces with custom-made furniture, pottery, textile, minerals, and musical instruments from the Atlas region, Morocco; sounds from the Atlas region and beyond

Commissioned and produced by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

At-Tāriq unfolds as a multisensory installation that reimagines traditional modes of listening and gathering through sound, craft, and sonic architecture. At the heart of the installation is the majlis, a customary hospitality setting prevalent in Arab and North African cultures. Traditionally a space of reception, refuge, and conversation, the majlis becomes in Atoui’s work a sonic and social instrument—its seating and furnishings embedded with acoustic components, ceramics, and handmade textiles.

These sonic salons—of which five were created and three acquired by TBA21—are conceived as spaces for collective listening and poetic hospitality. Here, audiences are not mere observers, but participants in a dynamic listening encounter. Speakers nested within hand-crafted cushions, drums, and earthenware generate immersive soundscapes drawn from Atoui’s collaborative compositions, inviting reflection on displacement, intimacy, and the politics of welcome.

Suspended throughout the installation, a suite of kinetic sonic objects—fashioned from locally sourced minerals, fossils, pottery, and musical instruments from Morocco’s Atlas region—resonate with subtle motion. Many are sensor- or motor-activated, turning friction and vibration into sound at the edge of audibility. This musical ecology evokes a living archive: a geologic and cultural witness to the entwined histories of trade, migration, and craft.

This installation is the outcome of a long-term, three-year research project initiated by Tarek Atoui, rooted in extensive fieldwork across Morocco and the Arab world. Its first iteration was presented as a collaborative performance and sound residency in Córdoba in 2023, where Atoui worked with musicians and composers to begin shaping the sonic vocabulary of At-Tāriq. The final installation articulates a vision of sound not as isolated experience, but as an embodied and communal force. At-Tāriq’s installation is both a space for resonance and a proposition for coexistence—of voices, materials, and memories.

Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary for the exhibition Tarek Atoui: At-Tāriq. A Journey Into the Rural Music Traditions of North Africa and the Arab World, premiered at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2025